manner, in the thousands and tens of thousands | of infants who perished in the deluge, in Sodom, in Egypt, and from age to age, who had not themselves transgressed, but who were involved in the general denunciation, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." This Scriptural account of the death of infants may well increase our sorrow. For in addition to the grief of natural instinct and acquired affection, it brings this mournful thought to the mind, that they die as partakers of our sinfulness. O, my friends, what havoc has one transgression made in this world! If nothing else will teach man the heinousness of sin; the acute pain, the racking agonies, the premature death of infants, incontestably prove that it is "an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God!"

We leave, however, this mournful part of the subject; for parental sorrow requires no arguments to produce it. It flows too readily, and in too deep a channel. We gladly, therefore, turn from RACHEL'S SORROW to RACHEL'S CONSOLATION.

II. "Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." Here you notice the tender sympathy of the Lord; and if there was no other comfort to the mourner, this is a very effectual one. For when the Lord says, "Refrain thy voice from weeping," we may well be assured there is a just ground for restraining grief. For He speaks not as man speaks. They, when they adduce their philosophic arguments to stop the mourner's tears, rather increase than diminish their woe. What consolation does it afford to a heart wrung with anguish, to say, it is of no use to be sorrowful; or to tell the mourners that their troubles must be borne, for there is no remedy; or to point to others, and say, theirs is only a common distress? None of these stoical arguments meet a wounded heart. Rachel has lost her children, and these cold reasonings will never dry her tears. But "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort," speaks. who does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men," or, as it is in the original, and the margin of our Bible testifies, he does not do it from the heart. This gracious God, who carries their sorrows, and bears their afflictions, says, "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears." The very sound of his voice soothes the mourner's heart. For it is the voice of love and tenderness; the voice of Him "who knows our frame, and remembers that we are but dust;" the voice of Him of whom it is declared, “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Yea, it is His

"He

voice "who so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." When He, therefore, condescends to speak, we may be assured that consolation is near at hand. Pause, then, my beloved friends, and let the sound of your heavenly Father's voice dwell upon your ear. He says, "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears;" and he gives the reason, Thy work shall be rewarded; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy;" or, according to the frequent style of the prophetic writings, "As her sorrow was, so her joy should be." Here may be traced the dawn of hope, which will dissipate the dark clouds of sorrow. The children are not lost; they shall come again from the land of the enemy."

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We, my beloved friends, who live in the clear light of the Gospel, have this dawn of consolation advanced to the full sunshine of open day. It is not veiled in prophecy, but is plainly revealed to us by the Lord. For parents may now be assured of the present felicity of their departed infant children, from the nature of the Gospel covenant. Infants die as connected with the first Adam, the guilty father of a sinful race; but their spirits ascend to God, and their bodies in due time rise again, as united to the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. For herein lies the glory of the Gospel, "That if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Christ Jesus. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous; that as sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus where sin hath reigned through Adam's transgression by the death of infants, there shall grace reign to eternal life through Christ Jesus by their resurrection from the dead. If any proof can be required to confirm this, the declaration of our blessed Saviour gives the most convincing. For what has he declared? O, my friends, there are many words which passed from his gracious lips, which may endear him to us: many words which may lead us to say, "Never man spake like this man:" many actions also that he performed may draw out our hearts in praise and gratitude: but if we omit his dying love, and his free invitations of mercy, no words that he spake, no action he performed, more affects the heart than when he said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven; and he took them up in

his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." For this declaration authorises a parent to bring his child to the Saviour as soon as he comes into the world; thus withdrawing him from his state by nature as a child of wrath, and uniting him, through divine mercy, to the Lord by baptism as a child of grace. It authorises him also to rest in assured hope, that if his child is taken from him, he is in the bosom of the Saviour. You mark the words, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Can language be more plain, or more general? It is a counterpart of the words of our text; "They shall come again from the land of the enemy;" not this, or that child, but thy children.

Rachel was a personification of the mothers of Judah and Benjamin, who mourned for their little ones. All of them shall come again. So our Saviour takes all the babes who were presented to him, and says, "OF SUCH is the kingdom of heaven," making no distinction, but assuring us that all who are thus taken in infancy shall enter into his everlasting kingdom. It is, my friends, delightful to hear these words of the Lord Jesus; to see the God of mercy disappointing the malice of Satan. Whilst the enemy is designing woe and lamentation by the death of infants, to behold our heavenly Father translating their spirits beyond his power, turning their cries into songs, their tears into smiles, and their momentary death into life eternal, Where are the spirits of the children who were slain in Bethlehem? Our reformers have told us where they believed them to be; for they selected the following passage as the portion of Scripture to be read for the epistle on this day :-"I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps and they sung as it were a new song before the throne: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth. These were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God." Here you remark the station given to these infants, and their blessed employment. They are with the Lamb; they stand amongst his chosen hosts, the hundred and forty and four thousand, who have the name of God on their foreheads; they are the selected choir of heaven: for whilst that innumer

able multitude of all nations, tribes, and tongues, "whose voice is as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder," are raising their hallelujahs; and whilst those happy spirits, who, like the courses appointed by David to praise the Lord on instruments of music, are touching their heaven-formed harps - and who can describe their melody ?-whilst these choirs are filling mount Sion with their praises, this hundred and forty and four thousand "sing a new song before the throne, which no man can learn but themselves." So sweet are the notes, so sublime the words, so full of harmony the whole composition, that they only who are the first-fruits to God and the Lamb can raise this anthem. And well may THEY raise it; for, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb from Adam's sin, and made meet for glory by the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit, they are in every way qualified. Their lips knew no guile; incapable of actual sin, they were without fault before God; they passed at once from the Church on earth to their station before the throne in heaven; at once translated from the miseries of a sinful world to the abode of light, and love, and peace, and joy eternal. Who, then, so qualified as they to sing this new song; they, on whom Divine goodness had showered down such peculiar blessings?

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Yes, my Christian friends, you who have, with sorrowful steps, followed the remains of your beloved children to their graves, if in truth you are resting your souls upon that Saviour who has redeemed them by his blood, you shall behold their happy spirits in the same station. They also are with the Lamb on mount Zion; they form a part of the hundred and forty and four thousand, sing this new song, and are now without fault before God. The good Shepherd has folded them in his arms, and taken them to his bosom. He has sheltered these tender lambs from the bleak winds, and scorching suns, and stormy tempests of this troublesome world. He has placed them in the paradise of God, "where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe all tears from their eyes." There! there! with their Lord their happy spirits now are. And where, let me ask, will their bodies yet be? Even where the promise made to Rachel declares her children shall be found: "They shall come again from the land of the enemy." He who has subdued that enemy, by taking away his sting, and by triumphantly rising from the grave, will come

again and when he does come, all his redeemed shall come with him; for thus the inspired apostle, in the epistle to the Thessalonians, declares, "This we say unto you, by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we be ever with the Lord." Then Rachel's work shall be rewarded. Her children "shall come again from the land of the enemy." The sleeping dust of these beloved babes shall be called forth; their bodies shall be fashioned like to his glorious body. They shall appear to the everlasting joy of their believing parents, and to the eternal praise and glory of

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their God and Saviour.

Such, my beloved friends, is the blessed hope our text affords to the bereaved mourner. "Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." You, then, who are lamenting over your own children, or the children of your friends, take the consolation.-Where could you wish your children to be? or what other employment could you desire for them? They are with their Saviour. They are singing his praises. They shall come again with him; and with him be blessed for evermore. Nature would say, I desire to have my child with me; but you, who are comforted by the Lord, will use other language. You will say, I would not stop my child in his joyful praises, to bring him back to this land of tears. I would not take him from the bosom of his Saviour, to place him in this wilderness of sin; nor endanger his assured blessedness, by exposing him again to the power of temptation. No; I will think of my child as a cord to draw my heart to heaven. My Saviour's love should more than suffice for this; but, knowing my weakness, he has let down this golden chain, all whose links are love, that nature and grace may act together, that both my Saviour and my child "Set your may say, affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." O that the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, may impress these thoughts upon your minds; and may he say to YOU, "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from

tears;" and may your present sorrow lead you to the right source of consolation; so that, while you mourn as a parent, you may have cause to say, "It has been good for me

that I have been afflicted!"

Next; this subject speaks to the young. To you, therefore, my dear children, I now address myself. You mark, my dear young friends, that these little infants die; for death is no respecter of persons. We live here not according to our imagined strength, but according to the time God has appointed for

us.

You see also by the death of infants that God has appointed an earlier for age some than for others. You may be ten, or twelve, or fifteen, or older; but these dear children were under two years old. They had no warning given to them; they were cut off in a day. As infants, we are assured they are in glory; for the Lord Jesus Christ has said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." But we could not speak in the same assured manner of all of you. You know God's commandments; that he said, "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. Honour thy father and mother; love one another. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." Above all, he has sent his Son to save you. If you have broken his commandments, as all have done; or if you have neglected so great salvation, as too many, alas! have, how shall you escape? Let, then, the history of the children of Bethlehem lead you, though young, to prepare to meet your God.

Once more; let this subject speak to those parents, who, on this memorable day, are still happy with their children. You are not, like Rachel, mourning over the graves of your little ones; they are smiling around you. O, my dear friends, ought not gratitude to God to fill your hearts? Whilst one and another have been taken, your children have been preserved in peace. Surely your souls should be drawn forth in adoring thanksgivings; thanksgivings which should not terminate with the lips, but be manifested in your lives. Why has God thus preserved you and your family? surely that you may be as witnesses for him. Consider your children, then, as a fresh gift from your gracious God. Seek their salvation with redoubled earnestness. Let your prayers for them be more fervent: your attention to their eternal interest more diligent and unremitting. Meditate also upon the slender thread by which you hold them, and train them up decidedly for the Lord: then, if they are spared, they will be present comforts to you; and if taken, you will have a bright hope "that they shall come from the land of the enemy." I earnestly

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pray God to enable us thus to act. May he pour his Spirit upon our seed, and his blessing upon our offspring! And when he appears may we be able to say, "Behold us, and the children thou hast given unto us."

Finally, my friends, let this subject remind us all, that NONE BUT LITTLE CHILDREN enter into heaven; that is to say, our Lord Jesus Christ declared, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye can in no wise enter into the kingdom of God." Let each one present, then, in a childlike spirit, entreat the Lord to convert his soul. And when the hour of death comes, what will be our consolation? Not that we have grown richer; that the number of our friends, or our worldly influence, has increased; but that, by the grace of God, we have obtained a childlike spirit; that, quitting the vain maxims, the proud reasonings, and the delusive sophistry of a world lying in wickedness, we have fixed our hope upon the Rock of Ages, even upon Him who says, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." Let us, then, now look to Him; and, "laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." "Now unto him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory, and majesty, dominion, and power, both now, and ever. Amen."

LITURGICAL HINTS.-VI. "Understandest thou what thou readest?"-Acts, viii. 30. ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST'S DAY, 27th Dec. ST. JOHN was a Galilean, the son of Zebedee and Salome, younger brother of St. James, with whom he was brought up in the trade of fishing, and with whom he was called to be a disciple and an apostle of our Saviour. He is thought by the ancients to be much the youngest of all the apostles, being under thirty years of age when he was called to that dignity: and his great age seems to prove as much; for, since he died at about an hundred years of age, in the third year of Trajan, he must have lived above seventy years after our Saviour's sufferings. St. John was particularly esteemed by our Saviour. He was not only one of the three disciples whom our Saviour admitted to the more private passages of his life, but was disciple whom Jesus loved," who lay in his Master's bosom at the paschal supper, and to whom our Lord committed the care of his mother when he was leaving the world. After our Saviour's death, St. John (as Eusebius informs us) exercised his apostolical office in Asia; though it is probable he continued in Judea till after the blessed Virgin's death, which happened

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about fifteen years after our Lord's ascension, otherwise we must have heard of him in the account St. Luke gives of St. Paul's journeys in those parts. He founded the Churches of Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea: but his chief place of residence was Ephesus, where St. Paul had many years before settled a Church. It is

thought he did not confine his ministry merely to Asia Minor, but that he preached in other parts of the east, probably in Parthia; his first epistle being anciently entitled, “To the Parthians." We are informed by Tertullian, that this great apostle, being represented to the Emperor Domitian as a public subverter of the religion of the empire, was, by the proconsul of Asia, sent bound to Rome, when he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, out of which he miraculously escaped unhurt. But the emperor presently banished him into the island of Patmos, in the Archipelago, where he remained several years. But when the Emperor Nerva revoked the severe edicts of his predecessor, St. John took the advantage of that indulgence, and returned to Ephesus; when, finding Timothy, their bishop, martyred, he governed that Church until the time of Trajan; about the beginning of whose reign he died, being an hundred years old, and never married.

Besides the Gospel, Revelation, and three Epistles of St. John, which the Church receives, there are some other apocryphal writings ascribed to him; for example, a book of his supposed travels; another of his acts, which the Encratites, Manichees, and Priscillianists, made use of; a book concerning the death and assumption of the Virgin; and a creed, supposed to have been given by the blessed Virgin and St. John to Gregory of Neocæsarea. St. John is generally surnamed "The Divine," by reason of the sublimity of his knowledge and revelations, and particularly because of the beginning of his Gospel. Polycrates,

bishop of Ephesus, affirms that he wore a plate of gold upon his forehead, as a priest and apostle of Jesus Christ. He is painted with a cup, and a serpent issuing out of it, because some heretics (as is related in the spurious Prochorus) having given him poison in a glass, he made the sign of the cross over it, and all the venom was dispelled under the form of a serpent.

The collect in our Prayer-Book is nearly the same as the Latin form found in Gregory's Sacramentary, which runs thus: "Merciful Lord, we beseech thee, cast light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrines of the blessed John, thy apostle and evangelist, may attain to everlasting gifts through the Lord."

We pray in the COLLECT for these two things: first, that God would enlighten his Church; and then, that it may be enlightened by the doctrine of the apostle and evangelist, St. John. The first petition is, in other words, a prayer for the continued influence of the Holy Spirit with his Church. God's word is, indeed, a "lantern unto our feet, and a light unto our paths;" and "if any man walk in the day"-in the "he stumbleth broad daylight of scriptural truthnot, because he seeth the light of this world; but if a man walk in the night"-in the obscurity of unassisted reason" he stumbleth, because there is no light in

him." But the Holy Ghost is the living light of the Church; and when he shines into the understandings and hearts of ministers and people, both shall be preserved from fatal error; the feet of both shall be "guided into the way of peace." In praying that the Church may be enlightened by the doctrine of St. John, it is not intended to exalt St. John above the other inspired teachers of the New Testament; but such language may fitly be used, considering how large a proportion of evangelical truth is conveyed through him. One out of the four Gospels, three Epistles, and the book of Revelation, have St. John for their author: add to which, that he was the privileged disciple "whom Jesus loved," and who leaned upon his Master's bosom; and he may, therefore, be supposed to have fully understood his mind, and to have drank largely into his spirit.

The EPISTLE is taken from the commencement of the first of the three Epistles written by the evangelist. It was addressed to Christians generally, and is, on that account, called the "Catholic or Universal Epistle of St. John," in contradistinction to the other two, which were written to individuals. It is selected for this day, because it contains the grounds on which St. John claimed to be believed in the things which he wrote, viz. that he had been an eye-witness and companion of Christ: "That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life-declare we unto you." This passage may be said to contain the subject-matter and the credentials of St. John's Epistles.

"The GOSPEL, after mentioning our Lord's final charge to St. Peter, records a remarkable conversation that passed between our Saviour and him concerning St. John, in which our Saviour obscurely intimated, that the disciple should not die till the dissolution of the Jewish polity; a prophecy which history records to have been punctually fulfilled. This conversation is followed by a declaration concerning the truth of the Gospel written by the apostle." When St. John says, that if all the things which Jesus did were to be written, 66 even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written:" his language is not to be taken literally; it is an hyperbole, or strong form of language, of common eastern use; meaning no more than that the writing at length of Christ's labours, and cures, and miracles, would have filled a large number of volumes.

THE INNOCENTS' DAY, 28th December. This festival is observed in memory of the martyrdom of the innocent children, by command of Herod, king of Judæa. That prince, being alarmed with the inquiry of the wise men from the East, and apprehending his own kingdom in danger from him who was said to be "born King of the Jews," endeavoured by crafty policy to destroy our Saviour, under a pretence of worshipping him. But God made known the wicked purpose of Herod to Joseph, who secured the life of the " holy child Jesus" by flying with him into Egypt. As for the wise men, instead of acquainting Herod where the infant Jesus lay, they departed into their own country another way. This disappointment enraged Herod, who immediately

"sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under," hoping to involve the young King in the cruel execution, and thereby soon to determine his reign. This barbarous act met with a severe punishment at the hand of God; for (according to Josephus) Herod was inflamed with a slow fire, which gradually consumed his entrails; he had an unnatural appetite, which could in no ways be satisfied; and his members rotted, and were full of crawling worms: in which condition he died. The Greek Church in their calendar, and the Abyssines of Ethiopia in their offices, commemorate fourteen thousand infants slaughtered on this occasion.

The original collect stands thus: "O God, whose praise innocent martyrs this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying; mortify in us all the evils of our vices; that as our tongue talks of thy faith, so our life also may confess it in our character; through," &c.

"The authors of this COLLECT followed the common interpretation of Matt. xxi. 15, 16, and supposed that the babes and sucklings, out of whose mouths God had perfected praise, or ordained strength (Ps. viii. 2) were certain young children,' who cried in the Temple, Hosanna to the Son of David;' and that he caused himself, and his only begotten Son, to be greatly glorified thereby. The Church notices the passage in this collect, not that the infants, murdered by Herod, did with their mouths glorify God; but because on this day, when we commemorate the death of so many infants slain for God's glory, the Church was willing to observe another instance, wherein God's glory was greatly promoted by such as have been supposed young children. The infants slain by Herod's command did therefore glorify God by their deaths, because the murder of them on account of the incarnation of our Lord, whose life was principally intended to be taken away, tended to the promotion of God's glory, inasmuch as he secured the holy Jesus in a miraculous manner from the rage of that tyrant, and thereby caused that prophesy concerning our Saviour, Out of Egypt have I called my Son,' to be exactly verified in our Saviour. Hosea, xi. 1; Matt. ii. 15."*

"The EPISTLE contains a vision of St. John, wherein was represented to him something of the glories of heaven, and the felicities of a future state; of which, because suffering infants may be partakers as well as adult persons, the passage is appointed to be read on the day of their remembrance. In this passage we have a glimpse, or imperfect representation, of the future joys and glories of heaven, which are enough to quicken our appetite and desires after them, though not to satisfy our curiosity about them. It doth not yet appear,' saith St. John, what we shall be; only we know that we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. We shall live for ever in his presence, and be delighted with the hallelujahs sung to Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb for evermore.'" +

We learn from this discourse the qualifications of the persons that will be received into those unspeakable joys; and they are such as are "pure in heart," and keep themselves "unspotted from the world;" for † Dr. Hole.

* Dr. Bennet.